


sing for the laughter

by openended



Category: Babylon 5
Genre: Gen, Karaoke, you can go home again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-25
Updated: 2012-11-25
Packaged: 2017-11-19 11:12:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/572647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/openended/pseuds/openended
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Girls just wanna have fun.  This includes high-ranking women in EarthForce.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sing for the laughter

**Author's Note:**

> This is 100% crack and 100% Tumblr's fault. A few nights ago, Minerva and I (~elizabethlochley and ~susanivanova, respectively, and you can probably see where this is going) got into a public Spice Girls sing-a-long. And then I made a joke about how I really must not write Susan+Elizabeth+karaoke fic and it turns out that _so many people wanted to see that fic happen_.

Susan doesn’t think she’s going to like Lochley. Even though she asked for the transfer from Babylon 5, and voluntarily took herself out of the running for station commander, she’s still not quite sold on the idea of someone else in that position. Plus, Lochley is John’s ex-wife (which Susan had to find out about from Garibaldi) and her allegiances are absolutely to Delenn regarding that particular cluster. So when she steps aboard Babylon 5 for the first time in months, she has all kinds of intentions to have very little interaction with Lochley. Keep it short and sweet, professional, thanks-for-letting-me-dock-here-for-a-few-days, and then disappear until it’s time to leave.

She doesn’t even want to come back to the station. She feels a pit in the bottom of her stomach when the _Titans_ exits the jump gate and the orange-red of hyperspace is replaced with the station, standing guard against the stars. But they need to stop for a few days to resupply and repair everything that their shakedown cruise found to be broken, and the station is the only logical spot; her crew knows her history with the station – though not why she left – and she tries to look excited for them.

Lochley’s off dealing with the continued aftermath of the telepath uprising – something Susan’s very glad she missed, because she probably would’ve handled that one with a PPG – and so she’s greeted by Zack and a squadron of security personnel looking very smart and on top of things. She confers with her XO about the giant list of things to fix, and then leaves him to handle the shift rotations and approve leave requests. Her quarters have long been given to someone else, of course, and as she steps into the elevator, she has to remember to give the correct address of Blue 14. She speeds up when she sees the door to Talia’s old quarters, not wanting to think too much about Talia, and briefly considers breaking something vital in the guest quarters so she can stay in a different section, one without so many memories. 

She exhales sharply when she finally reaches the quarters she’s been assigned and decides not to break anything; she’d have to break something vital in pretty much every room in the station if she wanted a room without memories and as much as she doesn’t think she’s going to like Lochley, she doesn’t want to saddle her with a station-wide plumbing disaster.

* * *

Elizabeth takes a deep breath and presses the doorbell to Susan’s quarters. She’s never met Captain Ivanova, but her reputation certainly hovers around mythical on the station. Their meeting is terse and awkward, the required handshake between a visiting captain and a station commander. Elizabeth can tell the new rank hasn’t worn off of Susan yet and she’s still figuring out how to just _lead_ instead of being someone’s XO. She can also tell that Susan really needs a break. They have an official meeting on the books for tomorrow morning to go over the details of the _Titans_ ' stay, but for right now, “Do you want to get out of here?”

Susan balks at the unexpected invitation. Her plans for the evening had been to go to bed soon, as the only way to really avoid thinking about where she is and why she left. A Human ranger passes behind Lochley and for a moment, Susan swears that it’s Marcus. But she blinks, and the hair’s shorter than she thought and he doesn’t have a beard. “Yes,” she says. “Thank you. Come in, it’ll only take me a minute to change.”

It’s three minutes, really, because she can only find one sock, but it gives Lochley time to explain that there’s this new place that just opened up on a lower level of Red Sector and she hasn’t had a chance to go yet because of this telepath nonsense that’s finally cleared up and right when Lochley’s explaining just what kind of guy Byron was, Susan finds her sock. “I’m glad I asked for a transfer,” she says, in all sincerity. Running a ship has its own intricacies and dilemmas, but it’s a contained and relatively static group of people. She turns off the lights and follows Lochley out the door.

“Karaoke?” Susan raises an eyebrow when they stop in front of the bar. She turns to Elizabeth. “I do not _sing_ in front of _people_.”

“Oh, come on. Garibaldi said it gets really good in an hour when everyone’s had too much to drink.”

“And by good he means bad?”

Lochley grins.

Susan makes a face, smiling but not sure she’s happy, and gestures for Lochley to lead the way. At the very least it’s a place on the station with precisely zero memories.

* * *

Lochley hasn’t had a drink in 26 years – which is a number Susan finds staggering – and Susan hasn’t had a drink since Marcus died, under the theory that she would never come back out, so the fact that the two of them are on stage, ready to sing, is sort of astounding. _This is not a thing reasonable people are supposed to do sober_ , Susan thinks as she’s handed a microphone.

Elizabeth has picked out a song from the 1980s that Susan’s never heard of, and she’s fully aware that she’s about to embarrass the hell out of herself. Her consolation prize is that Elizabeth is up here too, and out of the two of them, Elizabeth is the current station commander and video of her dancing and singing to someone called Cyndi Lauper is going to be a lot more difficult to get rid of than video of Susan doing the same.

Susan takes a deep breath and starts to sing in time with the little bouncing ball over the words. It’s awkward at first, because she’s not heard this song before in her life, ever, but Elizabeth has and she picks up on the rhythm quickly. She stumbles over a few lines, and catches up.

“What is _this_?” Londo gestures to the two women on stage, two women he previously thought would have the common decency to not do…whatever they are doing.

“Karaoke,” Garibaldi says. He’d come in for a nightly laugh and hadn’t expected to see Elizabeth Lochley and Susan Ivanova on stage, apparently willingly. At Londo’s continued confusion, he explains. “Ancient Earth tradition. Usually performed with a lot of alcohol.” Now he’s confused. Because he knows Lochley doesn’t drink, and Susan’s brand of drunk is more contemplation and less…dancing and singing.

“Is that…” John squints at the stage.

“Yes. Captain Elizabeth Lochley and Captain Susan Ivanova singing what I believe is ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.’” Garibaldi makes a mental note to grab a copy of the security cam footage and guard it with his life.

Delenn studies the two women, both of whom appear to be having more fun on stage than she thinks either one has had in months. “What is going on?”

“It is an ancient Earth tradition,” Londo informs her, “one typically performed with alcohol. As one would imagine would be necessary to complete such a humiliating activity.”

“Don’t you have someone to attack?” G’Kar says; he was looking for John and had been told he was here, of all places. He’s in a good mood and has no interest in Mollari ruining it.

“Fah,” Londo says, flashing fangs, and turns on his heels out of the club just as the song ends to thunderous applause from the audience.

“Mr. President, I was hoping I could have a moment –”

“Ah, in the morning, G’Kar.” John wants a chance to talk to Susan and Elizabeth, and not just about what just happened. He follows Garibaldi and Delenn to where the two women have just left the stage.  
G’Kar considers going after him, to force the conversation now, but it can wait until the morning.

“What was that?” Garibaldi asks.

“What else would we be doing?” Elizabeth shoots back before drinking half a glass of water in one go.

“It’s not like there’s a station to run or anything.” Susan grins. She hugs her three friends. “It’s good to see you again.”

* * *

Stephen yawns and considers his half-empty mug of lukewarm coffee. He looks up when Garibaldi stands over his table, smug. “What?”

“You missed a show last night, my friend.”

Stephen raises an eyebrow. “It didn’t end up in my MedLab, so it couldn’t have been that good of a show.”

Garibaldi sits and snags half a piece of synthetic bacon from Stephen’s tray. His grin widens. “Captain Lochley, Captain Ivanova, that new karaoke bar in Red 7.”

“Is there a punch line I’m not getting?”

“That _is_ the punch line.”

Stephen’s eyes widen. “Please tell me you have video.”

Garibaldi shrugs and pretends to study the last bite of bacon before popping it into his mouth. “I convinced Zack that I needed a copy of the bar’s security footage for ISA purposes. You’ll have a copy by the afternoon.”

* * *

Susan drops her bag on the floor of her quarters on the _Titans_. Thanks partly to Elizabeth and mostly to the inability of EarthForce engineers to have worked out all the kinks in the Warlock class ships prior to sending them on missions, she managed to avoid places that were painful enough to warrant slightly damaging the station to provide a valid excuse to leave the area. She’s relieved to be going, sensing that if she stayed much longer she was going to end up walking through that corridor where she curled up after Marcus died. She tells the com unit to play any messages that were left for her. There’s only one. “Play video.”

The opening chords of “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” fill her quarters and Susan stops unpacking. She slowly turns to stare at the unit. Yep. Publicly available on her ship’s network is video of her singing karaoke with the commander of Babylon 5.

She pauses the playback and creates a new message with delayed delivery. “Garibaldi, you’re a dead man.”


End file.
